JHK’s Three-Act Play, Big Slide
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…
Visit the Big Slide Page to order, perform, or see sample scenes.

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. Here’s JHK’s holiday classic: A Christmas Orphan.

11-year-old Jeff Greenaway hears his mom and dad argue one night after an office Christmas party. He infers from their garbled squabble that he is an orphan, found in a willow basket on the welcome mat outside their New York apartment. Thinking now that his parents are imposters, he steals away to Grand Central Station and buys a train ticket to Drakesville, Vermont, where he intends to start life all over again.Print | Kindle | Kobo (Digital) | Barnes & Noble (Digital)

For several years this past decade, we lived in rented houses where it was not practical to build a garden – given the expense and issue of altering somebody else’s property. In the fall of 2011, we bought a place on three acres literally on the edge of Greenwich, Washington County, New York, a main street (former) factory village of about 2,500 people. In March of the snowless winter 2011-2012 I began operations to build a garden.

It was something I had done a couple of times before but this was a little more ambitious. The idea was a central formal potager of raised beds, fenced, with some non-raised beds outside the formal square. I laid it out at 48 feet square with the entrance on a direct axis with the front door of the house.

Here is the garden site in late winter (of a snowless season).

The original front yard needed to be squared off. I called in an excavator to remove one big pine tree and a few small hardwoods. The village is about 800 feet through the woods and down the hill.

Carting away all the debris

Building Raised beds from 2 X 10. Boundaries and paths laid out with stakes and mason’s twine.

This was the complete scheme. I filled the raised beds with topsoil and top-dressed them with compost, both purchased and trucked in. The soil underneath the lawn is rocky and clayey. It needs help. At center is a platform of granite paving stones set in sand and pea gravel. Nothing is cemented, in case it doesn’t work out. The idea is to put a table there under a pergola. I’m excavating what will be a paved path leading up to it down the central axis.

I built a sifter to get rocks out of the excavated soil. Paved path complete.

This is how things were developing by mid-April as seen from an upstairs window.The two narrow double-heightbeds are already planted with kale.Chives planted in the four corners of the lower right square bed.

Two-foot wide borders for culinary and medicinal herbs on three sides of potager array.In background, deer fence under construction. A herd of about eight deer were practically living on the porch all winter.

Auxilliary side garden for strawberries and squashes.In background, a big tripod to grow hops vines up.

Early May, the beds have been planted.

Post holes being dug for picket fence around potager.It is as much a design element as a practical defense against rabbits and other varmints who can get through the deer fence.First lettuce crop ready to eat. Hollyhocks and yarrow in side border.

I decided to plant sunflowers along the rear border this year.At bottom, a little borage plant.

Strawberry plants in side bed.

The picket fence posts are all in. They are locust wood and will resist rot for 50 years or more.Posts will be topped off to 4 feet eventuallyMustard greens in near bed ready to eat.

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

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Hi
I write from Melbourne Australia…There has always been a tradition of home gardehjning in the suburbs of Australian towns and cities where most of us live on quite large,often wooded blocks iof land
In my childhood ,during WW2,it was almost a patriotic duty to grown food,and this also included poultry yards
In recent times there has been a great return to this idea and this is also reflected in a number of TV program on all aspects of home food productton and of a nuumber of excellent magazine(the best in my opinion is a splendid self-help magazine called “Grassroots” which looks at every aspects of this matter

Many people are also ghrowing some fruit trees in their yards and I have several orange and lemon trees which make great preserves
Many too are installing large water tanks…here the summers are long and hot and water conservation is a must..my oranges are a wonderful sight in winter..which is here
The media have woken up to this movement and there bis much comment and information on TV/Radio and newspapers

What a garden! How nice to see it is being developed gradually. But I am wondering why that much space left between the raised beds? Any specific reason? I thought a foot of space to talk in between would be enough…?

Well organized garden ,Jim .
I have a copy of Crockets book. A BIBLE to me as I have long beena container gardener . BTW : back in Flint ,Michigan – absolutely iconic of post industrialism- there is a small but growing gardening group. The City has carved itself out of existance as before.
I knew both Flint, Detroit , and Pontiac since childhood there .
Here in Chicago there is a couple really good sized ‘ youth gardens’ .Under the Chicago Housing Authority . At the end of the Green Line ‘L’ train route is a new urban farming project under developement . Not too soon either as last Summer’s drought dessicated the soils to a depth of 30 inches . Not to worry though as exploding Mexican area /population is ample with many ‘undocumented’ brazzos / braceros ..
Me ? I have sunny windows. tomatoes ‘spuds and + 80 watts of solar panels in my 8th floor windows . Big storms last night gave Con Ed power a big lesson in modesty .
health
Thoren

Gorgeous, Mr. Kunstler. That’s a lot of work, but the way you’ve got it situated…I think you’ve done it right. In your book, “Too Much Magic”, you reference the gardens of Paris of yesteryear, where there are cloches and cold frames and each plot under an acre or two—would that we could do that again in our cities, as you suggest for Detroit or Cleveland. It would give people a purpose, especially the older folks.

I really admire this layout–if my property were not on a serious slope, I would attempt what you’ve done here, but alas, my whole focus is just trying to keep the good healthy soil I’ve nurtured from eroding down into the woods surrounding my house.

Climate change and torrential downpours have not been kind to us here in North Carolina in the past few years. It may be time to find a nice quiet job in upstate NY, where the soil is still good, the weather is still somewhat stable–and there are like minded people.

@mcubed. Have you considered terraced beds on your slope? I live in NC too and have just purchased some acreage which I will settle in a few years after I depart from suburbia. The soils there are not ideal but can be improved over time with compost. Also take a look at agro-forestry practices as this will give you ideas about how to utilize your land without having to clear all the trees – which of course hold the soil in place. There are pros and cons to working the land in the north and the south. Myself I prefer the climate of the south (especially wintertime) so will find a way to make my land work for us.

Word Press helps make another web site beautiful !!!
Great job.
Although your garden is the opposite of our unordered one, I do like it and have a few comments.

Having created raised beds with pine, I can assure you that you will be replacing boards fairly often. We have a lumber mill down the road so we can get rough cut fairly cheap. Start shopping now because you have about 3-4 years before the bottoms crumble.
I assume there is some fine mesh screen on the inside of the 4′ fence to keep out critters.
We have given up on strawberries due to chipmunks undeterred by fences.
Best Regards,
David

Can’t wait to see the 2013 pictures of your veggie garden! Here at the Jersey Shore, I had to spend a LOT OF TIME cleaning up the mess Superstorm Sandy left us. The arbor with the gate that protects my veggie garden was crushed. Replaced it with a more substantial model and had to modify the bottom so the groundhogs won’t get in (there was a gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground that was just wide enough for a hungry chuck to squeeze in). The top of the wire fence is strung with twine to keep deer from leaping in. So far so good. The lettuce/strawberries/peas have been producing bumper crops of food. Tomatoes, cukes and zukes look like they will follow suit. Also our 3 pet hens have been busy laying eggs. Lots of omelettes and quiche in our table! Keep us posted on your garden’s progress! Always fun to compare!

The garden looks nice. Given the cost of construction, you -like me – will probably be harvesting tomatoes worth about $500 apiece, but with amortization, you may someday only be paying $5.00 apiece.
Ah, but what price gardening! It is cheaper than therapy.

I had an award winning garden in Sydney which was based on natives and grasses. I now live in a flat.
I also built timber terraces to give raised beds but I used treated pine sleepers [200x75mm] Drilling down through the middle of these boards one can drive in a length of reo to hold them in place. Or you can use star posts and notch out the ends to conceal them. This works for stacking the sleepers to get greater heights.
They will last for many years.
If this site takes photos I can put one or two up to show it.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, Mr. Jim, PLEASE repost the photos in this old entry. The, apparently lovely, photos that illustrate your first attempts at Eden are sadly just a scatter of those impudent little blue ‘?’ boxes we all love.

I doubt it is operator error, so fond am I of believing the technocratic fantasy of Mac perfection, but still.

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Too Much Magic

Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation

The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.